New Scientist reports on the Kepler space telescope’s latest discovery: a pair of neighboring planets that could both support life – within easy reach of each other:
Though there’s a huge distinction between being life-friendly and actually hosting life, the existence of side-by-side habitable worlds raises the possibility of aliens who are one step ahead of earthlings and have already discovered life outside their own planet.
“These are very exciting planets,” says Lisa Kaltenegger of Harvard University, who works on the team behind the NASA Kepler space telescope used to discover them. Together with other Kepler scientists, she announced the discoveries at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California today.
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The Kepler team, who use dips in starlight to deduce the presence of planets passing in front of stars, actually saw five planets – b, c, d, e and f – around the star in question, Kepler 62. But only e and f orbit in the habitable zone…, the region where temperatures should be neither too hot nor too cold, but just right for liquid water to exist.
(Also, too good not to share bonus: NY Times has an amazing interactive graphic showing all the planets Kepler has discovered… and how they revolve around their suns. )